Leaving the states to own devices

If a state's laws allow for the use of medicinal marijuana, but federal law does not recognize such an exception, which rules take precedence?

While one might be tempted to argue that federal law would trump a state's statute, the truth in the real world is a bit more complex. The answer, really, is that it depends.

It depends on who is president, who is attorney general, and how the administration decides to proceed.

When George W. Bush was in the White House, his administration - no matter who was at the top of the Justice Department - was clear in its belief that no state could make a law creating marijuana policy that was less restrictive than federal statute. The White House more than once put its actions solidly behind that theory, carrying out raids on clinics that supplied medical marijuana in accordance with the laws of a particular state.

But that was then.

Now that Barack Obama is president and Eric Holder his attorney general, things are going to be different. Holder said on Thursday that the Obama administration would no longer look to crack down on such clinics.

Looked at another way, federal authorities would no longer be in the business of trying to keep patients from following the advice - and prescriptions - of their doctors. And isn't that how it ought to be? If a state's voters approve a medical marijuana law and then a physician thinks it best for a patient to have some medical marijuana because of her condition, why should the feds be able to say no to that? They shouldn't. And now they won't be.

(This has nothing to do with the marijuana initiative passed by Massachusetts voters last fall, which dealt with simple possession, not with medicinal marijuana.)

In the United States of America - as the nation was conceived, as it was established, as it is supposed to function -- the real authority comes from the people and from the states, not from a centralized government.

This latest move on medical marijuana upholds that fundamentally American order.